[SamoyedFurFluff]

I actually don’t know if I agree with the last part. A chunk of the Rwandan genocide was a radio station instigating and advocating for the mass slaughter of a people. Atrocities in Myanmar also were originally advocated for in Facebook. On more personal levels, domestic abuse is also psychological torture and the wearing down of a person with words and it should be in someone’s right to file a restraining order to stop being contacted by their abuser even if the abuser doesn’t perform physical violence.

That is to say I broadly agree with the notion that speech should be relatively unfettered, but I do believe there must be exceptions for speech that actively aims to fetter people. We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens.

[jay-barronville]

> That is to say I broadly agree with the notion that speech should be relatively unfettered, but I do believe there must be exceptions for speech that actively aims to fetter people. We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens.

While absolute free speech remains unattainable in practice due to inevitable societal boundaries, it should serve as an aspirational ideal toward which we continually strive, minimizing deviations rather than expanding them. Speech restrictions often and quickly devolve into subjectivity, fostering environments where only dominant ideologies prevail.

So, of course, by all means, restrict speech that harms children, incites violence, etc., but be very careful to not open that door too widely.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Yes I agree totally with this, we should never open the door too widely to censorship. It should only be limited to speech to take away others rights as citizens and people. People can say whatever they want until they say “this person must not be an equal to me”.

[foxglacier]

That's a huge leap from directly instigating genocide that actually happened to "We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens." which is severe censorship of all sorts of political ideas, including ones which we already enact and most people agree with. There's a lot of widely-accepted government-enforced inequality (foreigners, prisoners, convicts, children, inherited rights, etc.) which just shows how overly broad the restrictions you say we must impose are. Even yourself saying that could be interpreted as a violation of your own rule! You also advocated for restraining orders! You're your own enemy. Your opinion could really benefit from some back and forth with other people to refine it into something more sensible. Hopefully I'm contributing a little to that.

[bilbo0s]

I don’t know man?

You need moderation both ways.

Yes to the First.

But also yes to the cops arresting a kid who posts on social media that he’s gonna kill all his classmates tomorrow morning.

Bonus points if the cops arrest him before he goes to school tomorrow.

Couching threats of violence in political language shouldn’t change anything in that regard.

(Well, it does these days. But it shouldn’t. That’s how you get kids gunned down at prayer.)

Anyway, bottom line is, adherence to the First doesn’t mean we abandon law enforcement, or military sense.

[jay-barronville]

> But also yes to the cops arresting a kid who posts on social media that he’s gonna kill all his classmates tomorrow morning.

I think that everyone (yes, literally everyone) would agree that direct incitements and threats of violence such as this would be fine to censor and deal with appropriately. As a free speech advocate, I know a lot of folks with free speech absolutist views yet I don’t know a single person who’d be against any of that.

The reality though is that, in practice, these extreme examples tend to be used to justify censorship only to end up making the rules vague and subjective enough that, sooner or later, folks start being censored for wrongthink.

Also, “moderation” is just a soft term for censorship.

[foxglacier]

People make vague and non-serious advocations for inequality and non-freedom all the time and it's not really that serious. For example saying on social media that some politician is a criminal and should be locked up. It has to be OK to discuss political ideas, even in the form of "I think we should..." (advocating) rather than "what if we did...?" (not advocating).

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Wait what’s wrong with a restraining order? Do you think it should be legal for a person to stalk and mail threats to someone, go to their workplace to issue threats, phone them to issue threats, etc? I acknowledge stopping someone is censorship, but I also believe that it is important to both harbor free speech as an ideal in the ideal world, and also that it is important to acknowledge we don’t exist in the ideal world where no one will use their freedom of speech to egregiously destroy people.

[foxglacier]

It's not the restraining order that's wrong, it's forbidding people from advocating for it!